Board of Commissioners - Regular Meeting

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For a written transcript of this meeting, or if you need reasonable accommodations including this communication in an alternative format due to disability, please contact the Clerk to the Commission's Office at 404-612-8232.

Y'all have Ellis on line? Okay. He hasn't had one before, right? Okay. Is it? Are they ready? All right. All right, good morning, everyone, and welcome to the second regular meeting of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners. Today is June 17th, June 17th, 2026. It is 10.03 a.m. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.

Chairman Rob Pitts.

Present.

Commissioner Bridget Thorne. Present. Commissioner Bob Ellis. Commissioner Dana Barrett. Present. Commissioner Marvin Arrington Jr. Vice Chair Khadijah Abdul-Rahman. Present. Mr. Chairman, you have a quorum.

Thank you, and it's my understanding that Commissioner Ellis will be joining us from Zoom today. This is his first of two allowed on Zoom. All right, please rise for the invocation followed by the Pledge of Allegiance. Amen. I pledge allegiance to the flag and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right, continue, Madam Clerk.

On page two, consent agenda. 260337, adoption of the consent agenda. All matters listed on the consent agenda are considered routine by the county commission and will be enacted by one motion. No separate discussion will take place on these items. If discussion of any consent agenda item is desired, the item will be moved to the second regular meeting agenda for separate consideration. Mr. Chairman and members of the board, we have two items on consent on page seven, juvenile court items. The department has requested to amend the contract amount. 260356, request approval to renew an existing contract, an amount not to exceed. It should be $4,500 instead of $4,000. 260357, request approval to renew an existing contract in an amount of $30,000 instead of $25,000 to provide accountability courts treatment modalities.

All right, any other items? Commissioners, anything? All right, a motion to adopt the consent agenda as amended. Motion to do so by Commissioner Thorne, seconded by Commissioner Barrett.

And the vote is open. And the motion passes, five yays, zero nays. Page seven, second regular meeting agenda. Mr. Chairman, members of the board, we have an item that has been requested to add to today's second regular meeting agenda, 260375, Fulton County Board of Tax Assessors. Commissioner Barrett has nominated Melinda Kaplan to a full board reappointment to a term ending June 30th, 2030.

All right, Commissioner, what's the emergency?

So, Mr. Chairman, this is a reappointment of Mindy Kaplan, and we unfortunately had every intention of getting it on the agenda, but just missed it somehow. And unfortunately, she is not allowed to continue serving until reappointed. And if we do not do it at this meeting, she will miss the next meeting, which is a pretty critical meeting for their next meeting, the tax assessor's next meeting, which is July 9th, I believe. So that's why it's an emergency.

Okay, that requires five affirmative votes to add. Let's vote to add first of all.

And the vote is open to add item.

As an emergency item. One, two, three, four, five, okay.

And the motion passes, five yays, zero nays.

And on the reappointment.

We'll go ahead and do the reappointment? Mm-hmm. Okay.

Well, no, we can wait.

Yeah. OK. What? That's fine. OK, 260358, adoption of the second regular meeting agenda. Mr. Chairman and members of the board, we have two amendments to today's agenda, first on page 9. Item to be removed, 260364, registration and election. Requests approval of a statewide contract to provide temporary staffing services. This item will be moved to the July 15th first regular meeting. Okay. and an item to be revised on page eight, 260360, Proclamations and Certificates. This item is revised to include a proclamation recognizing the Home Church Atlanta Appreciation Day, sponsored by Vice Chair Abdulrahman and Chairman Pitts.

All right, motion to adopt the agenda as amended. The motion to do so by Commissioner Thorne, seconded by Commissioner Barrett.

And the vote is open. And the motion passes, five yeas, zero nays. 260359, ratification of minutes. Second regular meeting minutes, May 20th. First regular meeting post-agenda minutes, June 3rd. Special call meeting post-agenda minutes, June 9th, 2026.

All right, motion to approve by Commissioner Barrett, seconded by Vice Chair Abdul-Rahman. Please vote.

And the vote is open. And the motion passes, five yays, zero nays. On page 8, 260360, Presentation of Proclamation and Certificates. The first proclamation is recognizing Odyssey Atlanta Appreciation Day, sponsored by Chairman Pitts and Vice Chair Abdul Rahman.

All right, a beautiful sea of green and blue. This proclamation, whereas Odyssey Atlanta is celebrating its 25th anniversary of unwavering commitment to educational equity, providing a transformative five-week summer enrichment program for nearly 350 undeserved students annually in Fulton County, and whereas for a quarter century, this organization has served as a vital academic bridge for students in grade one through 12, successfully combating summer learning loss and fostering a rigorous STEAM, S-T-E-A-M, curriculum that prepares scholars for future innovation. And whereas Odyssey Atlanta has established a remarkable legacy of success, boasting a 100% high school graduation and college enrollment rate, you can clap for that, among its participants. while expanding support to ensure post-secondary completion, and whereas the organization has succeeded in building a legacy of opportunity by fostering a supportive Odyssey family environment that nurtures intellectual curiosity and personal leadership for over two decades, and whereas through strategic partnership with local public schools, Odyssey has cultivated community resilience and developed lifelong learners who emerge as a positive, motivated forces within their communities. And whereas it is fitting and proper to recognize the profound impact This organization has made in empowering the next generation of leaders to aim higher and achieve more. And before I close out this proclamation, please keep those talents in Fulton County, please, after you finish school. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Fulton County Board of Commissioners recognize and commend Odyssey Atlanta for 25 years of excellence and dedication to the youth of our county and does hereby proclaim Wednesday, June 17th, 2026 as Odyssey Atlanta Appreciation Day in Fulton County, Georgia. Would you put your hands together for these remarkable youth?

On behalf of Odyssey Atlanta, I want to thank you so much for this recognition. We do this work because we want to make sure that we remove all the barriers to success for our scholars and we do it from the heart and from the mind. So thank you very much for this acknowledgement.

on the bench for the people in front.

The next proclamation is recognizing the Drake House Appreciation Day sponsored by Commissioners Thorne and Ellis.

Today with this proclamation, we're gonna celebrate the Drake House and their 20 years of being in existence. Many of you don't know, but the Drake House was birthed from the community. The community that saw a need to help the women and children in Fulton County. It was birthed by Mary Drake at the time, who is the head of North Fulton Community Charities. They serve so many countless families, help them build a stronger future. They help moms and children that are facing difficult circumstances like homelessness and help them get them on their feet going again. And they really do have support from the entire community. If you go to their fundraisers, they are incredible fundraisers where the community shows up and And if anybody knows me, they know I love ice cream. I think it's my favorite health food because it is a dairy product. And they have Miss Mary's ice cream cranking fundraiser every summer. So I encourage you all to come out to it. It's a wonderful event. So today it gives me pleasure to give them this proclamation. Whereas the Drake House is a 501 organization and a residential assessment center for women and children that opens its doors in June of 2006 to homeless single mothers with minor children and was founded by members of the North Fulton Chamber of Commerce's leadership class of 2004. who identified a need for emergency housing for homeless mothers in North Fulton. And whereas the Drake House serves as a support center to families with food pantry, a computer room, a training room for the mothers, laundry facilities, and a children's room where children can play while mothers do laundry. And whereas community leaders gathered donations and volunteers from business and civic leaders, faith-based organizations, Fulton County, the City of Roswell, and United Way of Greater Atlanta to create a nonprofit that could address the growing need. And whereas the Drake House is the only agency in the region that offers a private crisis housing program, and every year it serves 50 families and over 100 children. In 2017, the Drake Village was purchased to serve up to 16 more families, and whereas the Drake House was named in honor of Roswell native Mary Drake, a founder of North Fulton Community Charities who advocated for those in need. Now therefore, be it resolved that the Fulton County Board of Commissioners recognizes the Drake House for 20 years of positive impact on countless lives in North Fulton community and celebrates with the Board of Directors and the many volunteers on their 20th anniversary and does hereby proclaim Wednesday, June 17th, 2026 as the Drake House Appreciation Day in Fulton County, Georgia.

Thank you. Thank you so much to Commissioner Thorne and Commissioner Ellis and the whole Board of Commissioners. My name is Nisha Mason. I'm the president of the Drake House, and it is truly my honor to be a part of such an amazing legacy. The Drake House has housed thousands of women and children in these 20 years that we have been in the business of supporting families and although most people don't associate homelessness with North Fulton we do see a significant amount of need and I am just grateful for the amount of support that we get for the community not just to house the families that we house on our campus but to be an ear a source of guidance for many families throughout the metro area who are experiencing homelessness and financial insecurity The hardest part of our job is the fact that there just aren't enough resources to support them. So I am grateful to both Commissioner Thorne and Ellis for the ear that they have given us, for the opportunities that they've given us to be a part of the solution for the county. So thank you so much for this recognition.

The last proclamation is recognizing the Home Church Atlanta Appreciation Day, sponsored by Vice Chair Abdul Rahman and Chairman Pitts.

Okay, will the pastor, elder Raquel Henry Brown come up, and Minister Malik K. Brown, and any members of the Home Church, if you're here, please come up. I take just really a great honor, the chairman and I, in giving this on behalf of the board. These two individuals that are to the right and left of me have done great work and not only the LGBT community, but the greater community of Fulton County. They recently opened their church, the home church that was busting at the seams. I was able to be at the inaugural sermon and there was standing room only on the first time. So this is a small testament of the great work that both of you all have done. This proclamation, whereas Pastor Elder Raquel Henry Brown is a native of Atlantic City, New Jersey, and preached her first sermon at the age of 15 at her home church, glorious United Pentecostal Church, and whereas Pastor Elder Raquel Henry Brown relocated to Atlanta, Georgia, where she became a member of Tabernacle Baptist Church, and shortly thereafter helped establish the Vision Church of Atlanta and was ordained as an elder. She later became a member of the, tell me the name of it. Rehoboth. Rehoboth Fellowship of Atlanta. And whereas Reverend Minister Malik K. Brown's introduction to Rehoboth Fellowship of Atlanta came through an invitation from his then friend, Pastor Raquel Henry Brown, and he was quickly nurtured and mentored by the late, great, and I consider him a good friend of mine, Bishop Troy Sanders. And whereas Reverend Minister Malik K. Brown, serves as the Reverend Minister of the Home Church, Atlanta, where he stands alongside his beautiful wife, Pastor Raquel R. Henry Brown, helping to cultivate a ministry rooted in radical inclusion, justice, compassion, and the transformative love of Christ. And whereas together, Pastor Raquel and Reverend Minister Malik answered God's call and founded the Home Church Atlanta, which has grown into a thriving ministry and spiritual home for people from all walks of life. It is with humble pride now therefore be resolved that the Fulton County Board of Commissioners in commemoration of Pride Month recognize Pastor Elder Raquel Henry Brown and Reverend Minister Malik K. Brown for building a church that reflects the expansive heart of God where every person is seen, valued, and welcomed. And does hereby proclaim Wednesday, June 17th, 2026 as the Home Church Atlanta Appreciation Day in Fulton County, Georgia. Would you put your hands together for such a powerful couple?

And I want to turn the floor over to you all.

First, I want to say to the chair and to the vice chair, thank you so much. Thank you for recognizing us. Thank you for recognizing that God has called all of us to a place where all of us are loved. All of us are accepted. All of us get to be seen, not looked over, but looked on and used for all of our gifts and talents. So I just want to thank Fulton County for recognizing us on today. Appreciate you.

You're good. All right, let's take a picture.

All right, continue, Madam Clerk.

Continuing on page 8, public hearings, 260361. Citizens wishing to participate in public comment will be allowed to appear in person or may choose to participate virtually via Zoom video conferencing by registering on the county website www.FultonCountyGA.gov. Priority for public comment will be given to Fulton County citizens and those individuals representing businesses or organizations located within Fulton County. Speakers will be granted up to two minutes each. The public will not be allowed to yield or donate time to other speakers. The public comment portion of the meeting will not exceed 60 minutes. In the event the 60 minute time limit is reached prior to public comments being completed, public comment will be suspended and the business portion of the BOC meeting will commence. Public comment will resume at the end of the meeting. Mr. Chairman and members of the board, we'll start with the speakers here in Assembly Hall. We have received five speaker cards. Would all five speakers please come forward? Janet Hill, Steven Dingle, Victoria Morales, Mason White, and J.W. Grenadier.

All right, speakers, I'll say 15 seconds when you have 15 seconds remaining of your two minutes.

Good morning, Ms. Hill. On behalf of the Stop D-Theft Campaign, excuse me, here again, just to put on the record, please be aware that evidence indicates that Fulton County judges that are paid by taxpayer dollars allege that they have evidence of D-theft crimes, yet none of these crimes have been reported to law enforcement. Three out of seven Fulton County commissioners, including past commissioners, so you can do the math, have personal de-theft crime knowledge, and none of this has been reported to law enforcement. The Fulton County alert system has been set up to essentially be a shadow system that is not performing to trick residents into a process that goes nowhere. The state of Georgia has a alert system for the entire state of Georgia. There is no reason for Fulton County to have an alert system that basically goes nowhere. We have our former commissioner and our clerk of courts who put together an actual forum yet that only covered one portion or a small portion of Fulton County residents. And then we have another town hall that was put together by the clerk and she never even showed up. We want our stolen properties back and we want restitution. Thank you for your time.

Good morning, Chair, wherever Vice Chair is and the Board. It's the day after Election Day, so first I want to acknowledge the people who all helped us have a legitimate election with all the turmoil going around in Fulton County in our elections. I just want to thank the men and women and the volunteers and poll workers and you all as well. for running a legitimate election in Fulton County. Secondly, I'm a constituent of District 6. I'm in Southwest Atlanta, so you know Atlanta. It's a lot of conversation around our tax allocation districts as city council passed. Atlanta's voting body are moving that forward. I know eventually that will come before you all, and I'm just asking that you all do your due diligence and ask all the necessary questions. Chairman Pitts, I know you're well knowledgeable about the tags as you were probably a founder of some of them. But I just want to make sure you all take your time with it as this is a significant impact on the constituents of Atlanta. And I know APS City Hall, I mean, City Council shares the exact same constituents. So do you all, but you all is more expansive. So there are other cities in the county that this affects as well. So I want to make sure you all just take your time with it. And lastly, I know Governor Kemp appointed Judge Paige Whitaker to the appellate court, and I know that leaves the vacant seat for the election that Nakia Smith-Sellers won, and I know that could affect whether she takes the seat or not. And I don't know if you all have the power to affect that, but as a constituent, I just want to make it known that I hope she's allowed to take the seat that she duly won, and Governor Kemp just holds off on appointing a judge to take that seat. So as always, I appreciate your service, appreciate your time, and God bless.

Good morning. Our names are Zoe Smith. I'm Victoria Morales.

And we are Rico Jones.

And we are students from Odyssey Summer Program. We are here to speak on House Bill 1009, which will remove student access to phones and iPads throughout the school day.

We understand the intent, fewer distractions, better focus, and improve the social-emotional welfare, or where it goes, that every school aims for. But the evidence shows, well, the evidence doesn't support this approach as written. The Youth Policy Lab has found that removing phones does not immediately improve the test scores. So when we hear that claim as a justification, we have to ask, where's the data? And what are we actually solving? The costs are real often overlooked. Overlooked. Yonder pouches and lock boxes systems carry significant price tags, which is money that can be directly to facilities and students' resources. More importantly, a national parent school survey that shows 79% of parents want their children to have phones access for emergencies.

We also have local evidence, examples from CSK and Centennial, show that students are actually more effective communicating during emergencies when they have their devices. And there are also unintended consequences. A Stanford study shows that it is found that more suspensions are rose 16% from fighting. When phones are removed because the conflict doesn't disappear, it just gets delayed and then escalates face to face. We're not arguing against phone policies, we're arguing for smarter ones, ones built on real data that protect emergency communication and that don't shift costs onto schools already stretched thin. Thank you.

Good morning, Chairman Pitts and commissioners. My name is Mason White, U City Manager for the City of Jonesboro, and we're here today as Odyssey Scholars who attend, and we are concerned about the Fulton County Jail. The jail is overcrowded and one of the most dangerous in the state. The question is that we kept coming back to, it's very simple, are we actually solving the problem or are we just bandaging it? Before we send anyone to the jail, is it worth asking why are we sending them there in the first place and whether our budget is being used in a very way that keeps this community safe?

My name is Marissa and the numbers tell a story. The Fulton County Jail has the highest number of homicides and violent events of any jail in Georgia. A large part of that comes from overcrowding. Research shows that simply clearing minor misdemeanor cases could open four to five hundred beds and a faster indictment check. Done within 72 hours would mean fewer people sitting in a cell before they have even had their day in court.

My name is Willow, and the good news is that there are real solutions, and none of them require new money. We can use the budget the jail already has and spend it differently, putting more of it towards space and staffing where the facility is just thinnest. We can push for quicker trials so people are not stuck waiting for months, and we can ask whether are we sending the right people to jail at all. We can use options like community service, fines, or house arrest for minor offenses, and we can invest in education programs inside the jail itself.

My name's Cory, and these are not just ideas. They're backed up by evidence. The Congressional Research Service found that staff shortage make it much harder for jail to respond to violence. So putting more budget towards employees directly means a safer facility. The National Library of Medicine reports that education lowers crime. In fact, that just one additional year of education is linked to roughly a 30% drop of violent crime. So expanding education within our jails only benefits us. When we invest in people, the whole community gets safer.

Good morning. My name is Nadia. Beyond the numbers, this is about basic human dignity. People held in that jail have reported overcrowding, poor sanitation and not enough medical or mental health care. Whatever someone has done, they still deserve to be treated humanely while they are in custody. Safer conditions, smarter spending and a fair process are good for all of us. We hope you all will consider these solutions. Thank you for your time.

Hello, my name is J.W. Grenadier. I'm a certified ADA advocate. I am the founder of Prayer Across America, a project where we're praying in front of every Supreme Court building in the United States. I prayed in front of yours this morning. I'm the founder of Judicialpedia.com, which has had over six million views, a platform for people to be able to put their cases up and explain what they've been through. I am here today to support Janet Hill and her mention of the attorneys that know about the deed theft and are ignoring it. And you might ask why, from Alexandria, Virginia, I would have standing here. Because my defect is to Troutman Pepperlock, who represents Wells Fargo Bank. Wells Fargo Bank has filed in the city of Alexandria court, they have nothing to do with my property, yet their name is the owner on it. And Troutman Pepperlock is standing by the fact that they own it. They didn't just file a letter in the court that stated that. They also did a notarized letter stating that. The documents that my home was foreclosed on, and I am still in my home in 2018, the lawyer number on it belongs to a judge in Florida. He's never worked for Aquin. He's never had anything to do with any type of review of the document. He has admitted to that, but Troutman Pepper Locke is still trying to have me evicted from my home. As so many times happens with deed theft, the documents they use to begin the foreclosure, even they knowingly go ahead and foreclose. Robo-signing is illegal. In 2022, the Senate... Fifteen seconds. In 2022, the United States Senate did a letter to Jamie Dimon. Robo-signing is illegal. You must stop. But yet, our government is allowing our homes to be taken illegally by robo-signers. Troutman Pepper...

Mr. Chairman, members of the board, we have five speakers on zoom.

Good morning commissioners. The first person to speak is Robbie Caban. Robbie Caban.

Hello. I'd like to see, hello. I'd like to see the time clock, which is, could you speak up please? Hello. I'd like to see the time clock, which is afforded to all people speaking in public. For years, advocates, whistleblowers, and former staff, volunteers, adopters, fosters, rescuers, taxpayers have raised concerns regarding Fulton County Animal Services, animal control, enforcement, shelter operations, contractor oversight, animal transfers, spending, public safety, and animal welfare. For years, comments have been made publicly to this board. For years, complaints have been filed. For years, whistleblowers have come forward, lifeline staff members as well. Excuse me, excuse me.

Can you turn the volume up, please?

I have the volume the same as I've had the entire time I've made comment, Commissioner Pitts. I can raise my voice. Can you please start my comment over? Also, I'm not able to see the clock when I'm online. Commissioner Pitts, can you hear me?

Well, it could be louder.

I will raise my voice, sir. Thank you. Start my time. Can you restart my time, sir, please?

You start the time. Yes.

Thank you, sir. For years, advocates, whistleblowers, and former staff, volunteers, adopters, fosters, rescuers, and taxpayers have raised concerns regarding Fulton County Animal Services, the county contractor lifeline animal project, animal control enforcement, shelter operations, contractor oversight, a toxic work environment, animal transfers that were fraudulent resulting in harm. spending, public safety, tax dollars, and animal welfare. For years, public comments have been made before this board. For years, complaints by Lifeline staff whistleblowers have been filed and documented, presented to you all via email. For years, whistleblowers have come forward. For years, and targeted. For years, advocates have requested an independent forensic audit of Fulton County Animal Services, Animal Control and Enforcement, Shelter Operations, County Contractors, Vendor Relationships, Spending, Management Decisions and Oversight. Despite years of public requests, public testimony and documented concerns, this board has never commissioned that forensic audit. Today, there are reported allegations involving the potential misuse of animal control authority and county resources by county manager Dick Anderson. These are serious allegations that are reportedly being reviewed through the Fulton County ethics process. Dick Anderson has- All right, Ms. Yes. I can't see a clock, sir, when I'm online. That's a privilege that should be extended to all. Yes, you're interrupting me, sir. May I finish?

Yes, but no more comments, derogatory comments about staff. Continue.

I wasn't aware I made a derogatory comment. Can you tell me the remaining part of my time or stop my time and let me know the remaining part since I can't see it online?

You have 37 seconds.

Dick Anderson was appointed by this board. He's paid more than 300,000.

Ms. Coban, again, no more comments about staff in a situation that you're very much aware of. Continue, continue.

a public comment i i don't understand all i'm stating is stuff that people can see online there's a sally of over 300 000 annually via taxpayer dollar funds serves as the highest ranking administrative official in fulton county appointed by y'all overseeing county operations serving 1.1 million residents across 15 municipalities and acting as a central link between county departments and the board during that same time 15 seconds have funded millions of dollars into an animal control enforcement system and shelter where oversight and functions have gone directly through this person to you. During the same time, decades of advocates repeatedly warned this board about enforcement concerns, contractor oversight, specifically Lifeline Animal Project. Animals have been transferred to harm. Staff have been injured. People have adopted without proper backgrounds.

Thank you.

Given the position. Next speaker, next speaker.

The next person to speak is Charmaine Crook. Charmaine Crook. Charmaine Crook.

Okay.

Next person to speak is Jen Simmons. Jen Simmons. Next person to speak is Randy Hubble. Randy Hubble.

Yes. Hello.

Hi.

Go ahead. We can hear you.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Chairman Pitts, your dismissal of that lady and her concern of the Representative who is doing the dog shelter, is it wasn't because she said his name that was derogatory or what exactly did she say that was derogatory?

Continue.

Well, I did not hear her say anything derogatory. I heard her say facts and facts that it doesn't seem that the board is listening to and needs to. that's all I have to say.

And this concludes our Zoom public comment. Thank you. Continue, Madam Clerk.

Bottom of page eight, county manager's items under justice and safety, 260362, June 2026, justice system update.

Good morning, commissioners. Steve Narocki, strategy office. For the justice system update today, if we could please pull that up. We wanted to do this in three parts. First, we're going to skip ahead in the presentation of OK with you, Mr. Chairman, to the hiring and recruitment update, which Mr. Herman will provide for the sheriff's office. I'll then jump to an update on the five-point plan. And then following that, can provide an update on any other questions that the board has with the rest of the justice system update or the jail maintenance update.

I don't know, Mr. County Manager, did you have any comments before we jumped in? Okay.

No, I'll wait. Okay. Can we please advance to slide 15? And I'll turn it over to Mr. Herman for the hiring update in the sheriff's office.

All right. Good morning, Commissioners. Kenneth L. Herman, Jr., Chief HR Officer for Fulton County. As we have been providing you updates during the course of this engagement with the WALS group on assisting us with hiring detention officers into the jail facility, what you see before you and what's in your your packet is where we are historically since we started back in November. We used those first two months, November, December to really get all the ducks in a row and started the actual engagement with recruitment and placements in January. As you can see, the top chart illustrates that for the first six months of the year so far, we've hired 48 detention officers and or deputies in jail facilities. But unfortunately, during that same time, we've had about 34 separations, which brings us a net increase of 14 Jail staff sworn jail staff for that period of time and then I'm also Projecting that we will lose another four because we do have four separations that are pending In the month of May that will fall off at the next payroll run so we'll have a net of ten new hires and THE SECOND CHART ACTUALLY SHOWS THE WALLS ACTIVITY SPECIFICALLY THAT HOW MANY APPLICANTS THAT THEY'VE ENGAGED WITH, HOW MANY EMPLOYMENT PACKETS THEY'VE FORWARDED TO THE SHERIFF'S OFFICE TO DO HIS PROCESS OF his community review, agility, and the like, and then what has ultimately resulted in new hires from that engagement. And as you can see, we've, out of the WALS group hiring specifically, there's a total of 15 new hires that have derived from the candidate that WALS had, have sent to the sheriff. I'LL STOP HERE, COMMISSIONERS, AND ASK IF YOU HAD ANY OTHER QUESTIONS. AND JUST ONE SIDE NOTE, JUST BECAUSE I KNOW COMMISSIONER THORNE, YOU ASKED ABOUT IT TWO MEETINGS AGO, AND I HAVE THE DATA. THE AVERAGE TIME TO HIRE THE SHERIFF IS LOOKING AT 136 DAYS TO HIRE from start to finish, which is a little longer than what we do in the county, which is 60, but we acknowledge that he has a much more tedious process as it relates to background checks and community checks as well. So I just wanted to get that to you, Commissioner Thornton.

Commissioner Barrett.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for the update. Just a couple of questions. You're talking about the difference between people coming in and the separations. And obviously, I don't want to get into any sensitive information about anybody's separation in particular. of the people that I guess are voluntarily leaving, do we have sort of some sense of what the reasons are? In other words, are these longtime people who are dissatisfied? Are these new people who aren't working out? Is it because of the benefits package or the hours or the jail conditions? Or do we have any sort of sense of why people are kind of leaving at such a fast pace?

We do have a general sense. Unfortunately, we have not received that specific data from the Sheriff's Office. And how we get that data, Commissioner, is that those individuals are asked to complete a exit survey voluntarily, of course, and they do provide us feedback. I just have not looked at that in quite some time to provide you a good sense of whether it's benefits, whether it's the conditions in the jail, or whether it's just a new offer that they're exploring in their careers. So I'll have to take that.

Yeah, I think it would be good because we talk about not just hiring, but hiring and retention. So, you know, it's one thing to track and say, you know, 773 people filled out an application, which that top line of data in the bottom chart I don't think is particularly helpful because that's just talking about essentially how many people bought a lottery ticket. Like, lots of people can apply. That doesn't mean that really much, so I don't know that that really guides us in terms of understanding what's happening and how it's all going, but that's a conversation for another time. But I do think focusing on the retention is an important piece. We have to know if what we're putting in place in terms of benefits and salaries, working conditions, et cetera, are working or not.

And I'll remind you, Commissioner, and I'm sure you'll fully remember this, but I think in February, the board adopted a $10,000 retention bonus and a sign-on bonus for the individuals that are 100% assigned at the jail facility. And we do see that that has... started to slow the separations. As you can see, we had a big uptick of separations in the month of April, and that has been cut in half in May. And now you're talking about four pending in June. So we could attribute that to the retention bonus as well as some other factors. But again, I just have to do a little bit more detail and digging to get you some more precise information.

Thank you. That would be good. And then one last thing. Sorry, Mr. Chairman. Obviously, the number of packets coming from walls to the sheriff's office has dropped off pretty significantly. It seems like the percentages are better, right? It seems like we're getting more hires, you know, four out of 10 versus zero out of 49, right? So there's some improvement in terms of the percentages, but the number of packets is going significantly down. Is that... specific to a change in procedure?

Actually, it is. I think WALS, when they... We had an on-site meeting with WALS, I think the first week of May, and during that conversation with WALS, the sheriff's office, they made significant tweaks to the process, which led to less packets coming to the sheriff, as indicated in the charts, in the months of May. But we believe now... while it might be less or a little bit more in the future, you get him a lot more better quality candidates. I think that's the key thing that the sheriff was indicated that he wanted better quality candidates. So as we make those adjustments, we are hoping to see better quality candidates and more selections as well, because that's a that's a big thing. You know, we want more individuals hired versus the number of packets that come to the sheriff or the number of interactions that walls may have.

Yeah, well, thank you for that. It sounds like we're starting to move in a good direction, so I look forward to some additional information, but thank you very much.

No problem. Okay, Commissioner Ellis is on the... Commissioner Ellis, followed by Commissioner Thorne, followed by Vice Chair Abdu-Rahman. Commissioner Ellis?

Yeah, thanks, Mr. Chair. Can you all hear me?

No, we cannot hear you.

Can't hear me. Oh, we can hear you.

Much better.

All right, so you can hear me now? Yes.

Yes.

All right. So, Mr. Herman, do we know we we allocated about, you know, a little under 20 million for this net to 200 new hires of folks doing detention work. How much of that has been spent year to date?

I don't know if my finance team could help me out with that dollar amount. Good morning, Commissioner.

Good morning, Commissioner Ellis. To date for the recruitment and retention, it's been about $725,000 to date. Okay.

How about roughly, it was about 18, is that how much we had allocated to this total? 18, 19 million?

16,876. I'm 16,876,000. Okay, 16.8 and we are sitting here on June 17th and we've expended 720? 720,000 you said? 725. 725.

All right, that's an abysmal result by any stretch of the imagination, certainly. And this net 14 is an abysmal result, you know, as well. When did this, we approved it in, you know, at the time of the budget cycle. When was this actually started to been acted upon? Was it late March or early April?

Commissioner, I suspect it was early April that the sheriff rolled out the initiative to his officers, and then we had to do a small little reset and had to reissue it in the month of May. And that has now fully... what's the word I'm looking for, has fully executed all of those retention agreements for those officers who opted in to accepting the retention agreements.

Okay. So we've spent $725,000 to date, made very little progress here. We know and we established up front that this, and we heard this from our federal monitor, we've seen it in the report back, that this was the number one issue to address within the jail in terms of safety, et cetera, you name it, was more people providing this, doing these detention services within jail. the actual facility. And we set this target of net 200. We're, you know, we're over halfway through the year and we've made next to no progress despite allocating significant funds and very little of these funds actually being expended. on the program only starting in April. So this is extremely frustrating, you know, for everyone that this, you know, this has been such a slow movement of activity. I had a question. We had also just to sort of put this in perspective of cost, you know, and then the impact of this not being acted upon. I believe we had received a report and maybe it'll come back later, but How much are we on track to spend for repair of locks that basically have been repaired and then turn around and get destroyed again because the doors are left open? Is it roughly $3 million? Do I have my number right, Mr. Davis, if you're there? He's not here. Okay. Mr. Anderson, can you confirm that that number is correct?

Yes, sir.

And Mr. Davis is stuck in traffic, but around 3 million. Around 3 million. So that's the kind of impact that this not being acted upon has. We're layering money over money, not because of the facility itself, because we don't have people in there doing the work of detaining the inmates properly and having adequate supervision. And And while I have a certain degree of potential interest in why people may be leaving or not, the operation of the jail, as we've talked about before, is the sole responsibility of the sheriff. And the sheriff has the responsibility, just like any other supervisor, of creating working conditions for their employees, esprit de corps, et cetera, so that people don't want to leave. So that's the stuff that needs to occur is that there needs to be better management of the facility. When you said the speed in which we were getting people through the system to hire, you said is 138 days. Is that what you said, Mr. Herman?

136.

136. What's the traditional speed for us to hire somebody at the county level in general?

Our goal is 60 days.

60 days. And part of the reason we engaged walls was to shorten this process, correct?

That's correct.

And it hasn't shortened the process. Is that correct?

In all honesty, Commissioner, I have not looked back at data that was pre-WALS to tell you what our time frame was. So let me take that as a takeaway to come back next week. I mean, next board meeting to tell you whether or not it's shortened or lengthened.

Okay. So net takeaways right now, 136 days. We don't know if that's shortened or not. And we've expended only $725,000 that was allocated for this particular program. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

All right, Commissioner Thorne. How much is left of the amount that we appropriated for this purpose? $16.1 million. Is that right?

Commissioners, we did repurpose a portion of those funds to fund the additional security staff for Allod recently. That was one point... Six, 1.9 million of that amount. So we're probably closer to 13. I'm having about 13, maybe 14 remaining.

Remaining. That could be reprogrammed, correct?

It could be.

If the board chose to do so.

Well, we've made a commitment on a portion of that for the retention bonuses. They are being paid out in each pay cycle, so there's a portion of that that we will continue to incur for retention. the $10,000 bonus that was offered to current jail-related detention staff, and then new hires that come in that work in the jail. So we will continue to spend some of that. But yes, we could repurpose the portion that we do not expect to use on new positions. Yes, sir.

Thank you. Commissioner Thorne.

Okay, so I want to back up. We determined the net 200 new hires based on a staffing study, correct?

That's correct, Commissioner.

And we did that staffing study because of the consent decree.

Correct.

And we knew that 200 was a lofty goal, so we got the Walls Group to help with recruitment, correct?

That's correct.

And why did we, could you give some background to the public why we hired the Walls Group, what their history is with recruitment?

And just for clarification, the 200 is 200 new hires for the next two years. The total need was about 400. We understood with working through the monitor that the Walls Group was having significant success, if I believe, in Philadelphia. HELPING PHILADELPHIA, THEIR DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS NAVIGATE THE SAME TYPE OF STAFFING CONCERNS RELATIVE TO THEIR CONSENT DECREE. AND BECAUSE OF THAT, THAT'S WHY WE OPTED TO GO WITH THE WALLS GROUP TO TRY TO HELP SUPPLEMENT AND PUSH MORE INDIVIDUALS THROUGH THE PROCESS SO THAT WE COULD ALSO STAFF UP TO MORE QUICKLY PROTECT OUR RESIDENTS IN THE FACILITY AS WELL AS OUR OFFICERS.

And do we know why they were successful in Philadelphia, but haven't been successful here?

I don't know if we've ever sat down and said, well, they were successful in Philadelphia because of X, Y, and Z, and they're unsuccessful here in Fulton County. We do suspect that there are some nuances between the two jurisdictions from what we understand. Philadelphia went through a process where... They may have waived a number of their criterias to get individuals staffed more quickly. The sheriff just recently did a modification to his process as well to allow more individuals to get through the process. It might have been a different economic opportunity. In Philadelphia, this type of job might be a very high-paying job. In Philadelphia, while in Atlanta, it may not be. And you could also say, well, you know, there's the public perception of the facilities. I don't know if Philadelphia had the same type of negative spotlight placed on it as our facility may have had for the last couple of years. So those kind of things play into the various factors as to why they might have been more successful in Philadelphia and slowly becoming successful in Fulton County helping us.

Well, I think the wave criteria, that's a good move on our sheriff because we are in a crisis situation. If we need 400 people and we're only getting 14 now, maybe 10 people, that's a crisis. And it's a crisis with human lives. It's a crisis with financially with the residents not being properly watched and I imagine it's hard to retain somebody when you're working under conditions where you're not poorly you're poorly staffed and you're not backed up and yet they're probably having to work double shifts and overtime so I can imagine it's not a good work situations. So I would love if there's a way of finding out what the nuances in talking with the WALS group, why Philadelphia was successful using them, and why we are not. I think we need to work on that 136 days. You know, we have had detention officers that have been through the process that have not worked out very well for us, given the previous, or the process that the sheriff puts them through. So I'm glad that the Walls Group is trying to work with them and trying to get more hired and trying to find what they're tweaking to get a better quality candidate, what that candidate may be. I want to address, we approve the bonuses and benefits I thought it was in January, the end of January, but maybe you said February.

That's what I recall, Commissioner. I think it was in February.

So we approved them in February. Can you tell us why the sheriff didn't implement them until April?

The feedback that we received was there was some concern within the sheriff's senior leadership team about the bonuses only going to sworn officers that worked within the jail facilities and not all sworn officers that may work in the criminal unit or at the courthouse. I think that was the overarching dilemma that they had to navigate based on the direction and how the budget was allocated by the Board of Commissioners.

Okay, so basically he didn't want the tax dollars allocated to where we have a significant need, where we have a crisis. He wanted it applied across his entire staff. Is that correct?

That's what we understand to be the major delay.

And so in April, he decided that, okay, I'll take the bonuses just for the detention officers.

That's correct, and again, if I need to change my date, I'll reserve and send some clarification after that effect.

Okay, no, that's great to know. I'm also with Commissioner Barrett. If we could get reasons why people are separating, that would be helpful information. If they could be anonymous, protected, I guess, to be able to freely share why they're leaving, that would be great if we could get that information.

Yes, ma'am.

Thank you.

All right, Vice Chair Abdur-Rahman.

Thank you, Chairman. A statement was made, something along the lines of a better qualified candidate, something I may be paraphrasing. That's a better qualified candidate according to who according to what specifications? I need a little bit more elaboration on that.

To clarify, it was a better quality candidate and this is the specifications from the Sheriff's Office as to the type of candidates that they would want walls to exclude versus forward to them for further consideration because it will exclude them for various reasons.

Okay, well let me rephrase that then. Um, walls, we went with walls because of their standing, their reputation, and there was a need and we fully vetted them as to what was needed to solve our problem of trying to help the sheriff to, um, get more employees. Is that, would that be a correct assessment? Uh, yes, ma'am. Okay, now if we did that and ultimately the sheriff decides what he considers to be the qualifications that he wants, then what Walls submit would not be the final factor. It would be what the sheriff wants, correct?

Wall submits a qualified applicant based on the board's criteria, but then there's the sheriff's criteria that then weeds that applicant out for various reasons that the sheriff and his leadership team have decided are important to weed that individual out of the process.

Thank you for eloquently saying that. Because this board, regardless, of any political theater or personal feelings wants individuals to get hired to work there. That's why we allocated the money. But I want the listening public, we had the Odyssey kids coming here today and they even weighed in on the jail. We have to do our part with the funding He has to do his part. When I say he, I mean the sheriff has to do his part when it comes to staffing. I would be remiss if I did not say I would not know what the best quality person in the jail would be the best candidate. I would not know that. I do not run a jail. But a company... like Walls who has a history and had specification according to what this body thought was best and in conjunction with what the DOJ said because they knew what we were trying, ultimately the sheriff and his leadership team must decide what's best for the jail.

Would that be a correct assessment? Yes, Commissioner.

Okay, so what I'm gonna say on this is that we as a body will continue to do what we need to do. But the taxpaying citizens of Fulton County need to understand this relationship takes more than one side. This relationship needs to have working components to try to get individuals there. I would be, and this is an offline conversation, I would be very, very interested in knowing what were some of the things that made a person who was qualified based on Wahl's assessment but was not up to par based on the sheriff's assessment. I would like to know that even if there has to be a discussion, an executive session, because it is a personnel issue, it is at the discretion of the sheriff, and I don't want any formulation publicly on something But it's important that we understand that the taxpayer citizens got to understand that this body as a whole is trying through appropriating millions of dollars through a company to help us with the goal of 400. And then we changed it to 200 within what was a two year process of the 200. Am I am I correct in that?

Oh, sorry, Commissioner. I was taking some notes. What was the question?

Two years, 200 was the goal?

Oh, yes. It's a total of 400, 200 per year.

200 per year.

200 net new hires per year.

Okay. And just for the listening public, at this point, at this junction, how many net hires have we had?

14. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. I'd like to have that information that I asked you for. Thank you.

All right, Commissioner Ellis.

Yes.

We also entered into an engagement with another firm to directly hire people doing work within the facilities that weren't direct detention but related, correct?

Yeah. Good morning, Commissioner Ellis. That's That's correct. We have a contract with Allied providing tower staffing with about 100 FTEs and then just entered into an extension of that contract at Grady, which is a little over 30 FTE, and they're about to start deploying within the next couple weeks. Okay, so we entered into that contract when? I'm sorry, Commissioner, the volume's down.

We entered into that contract at what time? When did we enter into that contract with Allied?

I think it was mid-year. I'm looking over at Ms. Strong-Whitaker. I think it was mid-year of last year.

Yes. Mid-year of last year for the 100 FTE for tower staffing. And we got to that 100 by the end of last year?

Yes, it was either the very end of last year or it might have been January at the latest of this year when we hit the 100 FTE.

Okay. So there's a firm we went out with, contracted with, and they were able to hire people who were willing to work in our facility. And that arrangement, as I understand it, has been generally very positive and so positive that we're now extending it into this other area with another 30 people, correct? Correct. And then that, and that those positions will come online, we think, very quickly?

Yes, sir. They, I believe they have training scheduled on the 22nd of this month, and then they'll start the onboarding very quickly after that.

Okay. So this does verify that there are people out there that, uh, that are available to work in the jail facilities and who were able to get and be there and provide service, and we were able to stand that up relatively quickly with this particular firm. So we'll have about 130 people, new people, working within the jails through that arrangement, whereas this arrangement has netted us about a net new of 10. Correct.

Okay, thank you. Mr. Thorne.

Mr. Herman, we set salaries. We did a staffing and our staffing analysis. Can you speak to the salaries we set and how they compare to other jurisdictions across the county and local counties?

Yes, Commissioner. The current total compensation for the detention officers, which is what we're talking about and where we've hired walls to help us fill those 200 per year, the base pay for the detention officer starts at $54,000. with the additional $10,000 bonus that brings it to $64,000. Plus, we also extended a $100 per month. It was per month? Yeah, per month. No, per week.

The auto allowance.

Auto allowance that got us to another $1,200. So you're roughly about $65,000 in total compensation before that individual has to work any overtime. That number puts us well above our neighboring competitors, whether it's the CAB, COB, the City of Atlanta, as it relates to entry-level compensation for a detention officer.

In addition to that $65,000 base pay, they're eligible for overtime, correct?

That's correct.

And is that overtime time and a half, or what is that?

As of right now, it's time and a half, and the sheriff has decided to pay overtime as it's earned versus the countywide practice of comp time first and then get into a maximum of comp before you get overtime for non-exempt employees.

Okay, it would be helpful too if we could get with our current detention officers what their average salary is per se the first six months of this year or since we've implemented the bonuses. Because we went back and gave the current detention officers before we implemented the bonus, we went back and gave them those bonuses, correct? Correct.

Yes, everyone who filled out the retention bonus form is now receiving that retention bonus.

Okay. Yeah, it would be great to know how much these officers are making in total. Okay. Thank you.

And just cash in their pocket, you do not want the benefit side of that as well.

Thank you. All right, Vice Chair, Amritur Rahman. Thank you.

Thank you, Chairman. And I also want to bring another valid point. Philadelphia has a higher cost of living than Atlanta. And so the pay for the detention officers in Philadelphia is different from the pay for the detention officers in Atlanta. And so commensurate with what the detention officer's starting pay is, we are across the board in our region, we are within those guidelines, correct?

I would say with our total comp, we are leading that field of competition.

Yes, I just wanted to make sure that the listening public understand because we have an undercurrent of people out here saying, well, if you gave them more money, we'd have more people. If you gave them more money, we'd have more people. No, it's not always about the money. It's about operational issues. It's about other things that find its way into it. But I want to be crystal clear that when you look at the compensation package for starting detention officers for the Fulton County Jail, we are leading as far as the pay and the benefits that they get in starting. Would you say that was a fair assessment, Mr. Herman?

Yes, ma'am. Thank you. I'll say based on my last review two months ago.

Now, see, you're messing up, because nobody asked you to say all that.

Thank you. All right, other questions or comments? All right, continue. Thank you, sir.

All right, thank you, Ken. Mr. Chairman, I know you have an item on the agenda later for the five-point plan, but I can provide that update right now, if okay? Sure.

Can we advance to the next slide, please?

Great. So you'll see here the total of the five point plan which has actually grown. We've added two new items to this plan and have identified another item where we re-evaluated the data and don't believe that there is enough of a reason to do any initiative, and I'll call that one out first. For the hold conditions that pertain to individuals who have completed all of their Fulton County justice system obligations, their case has been adjudicated, case dismissed for whatever reason, and there's no other condition that are holding them in the jail, such as a warrant or something else, That count is roughly, on any given day, only about two dozen people, and there is a significant turnover. When we initially brought this to you, Mr. Chairman and the board, we thought the number was closer to about 100, but we re-ran our data, we worked very closely with the Sheriff's Office on that, and we realized that count is significantly lower. So we have removed that one item, but have added two other items, which I'll walk through right now. So starting at the top of the list, increasing ankle monitor utilization. This is an area where we have seen very significant improvement over the last couple months. As of May 31st, as of the end of last month, we have 633, 673 participants with monitors, which represents about a 72 net increase of ankle monitor usage for the month of May. We also had a net increase of 25 monitors in April and 24 monitors in March. So we've had about roughly a little over 150 monitor increase over the last three months. So significant improvement with the first initiative there.

So does that translate into decreasing the population?

That's part of it, sir. Decrease the population, also limiting individuals going into the jail. So from both sides of that. So that's a positive. Significant positive. That's a good thing. Very good, sir. Yes, sir. Next is implementing automated text reminders. And again, a reminder on this one, it is an initiative to send automated text messages to remind individuals of upcoming court dates. this initiative is being primarily led by the clerk's office as well as superior court and they're targeting criminal cases within superior court and it would be about two weeks before the trial date individuals would start getting these reminders to appear there are some technical difficulties they're overcoming right now some final uh... configuration between tyler the vendor and the and the clerk's office for the opt-in there are thousands of individuals that would qualify for this initial cohort so they are just working through some final technical items to get a mass opt-in so that they can start receiving these but we are anticipating a launch hopefully by the end of the summer, by hopefully August. And the result of that is anticipating about a 25% reduction in the FTAs. So again, helping reduce the population from that front. So 25% of what? 25, so for individuals receiving, so for the full population of someone who might receive a failure to appear The goal is to reduce that population by about 25%.

You said it was 1,000?

It's less than 1,000. It's a couple hundred. Okay. And so we're hoping, and you'll see on the far right the potential impact, we're hoping about 20 people or so are booked into the jail because they have a failure to appear warrant per month.

That would be additional beds, correct? Additional space? Yes.

Yes, sir. That's also a good thing. Yes, sir. Thank you. Okay, we'll move to the third item, establishing a bond review calendar. So this population that we're targeting are unindicted inmates who have a bond of 10,000 or less and have been incarcerated between 30 to 90 days. We do have some very good movement on this. Superior Court is coordinating with Magistrate Court right now to add this to an existing magistrate preliminary calendar. So there's some capacity on a magistrate calendar that already exists and they can add this bond review calendar to that calendar that magistrate is presiding over. We are expecting cases to be heard either on a weekly or biweekly basis every other week, depending on the volume. And we're hoping to average about 20 to 30 cases per week that are being heard by this magistrate. And that new calendar is expected to launch also in August.

And if this is successful, that would also free up beds.

Yes, sir.

Okay, another good thing. Yes, sir.

Okay, moving to the fourth item, and this is where we have a new item added to our jail population reduction initiatives called the Consolidated Motions and Trial Calendar. This, I'll frame it very quickly before I go into the detail. If you think of the bond review calendar, which is targeting a higher volume of inmates who have been serving a much less amount of time in the jail, 30 to 90 days, this is on the opposite end of the spectrum, where we're targeting individuals who are ready to stand trial with the most heinous crime, so rape, murder, the other seven deadlies. This would not have the impact in terms of volume because a murder trial or a trial with one of the seven deadly charges does just take longer to prosecute. However, what we are targeting and where the benefit is going to be are those that are serving the longest in jail right now, the 200 days, the 300 days. This initiative is to target those individuals. And so the way this is currently working, this consolidated motions and trial calendar, a senior judge is presiding over cases that are ready to stand trial, and it's on a monthly basis twice per week. So two weeks per month is their current cadence. Because it's a senior judge, so a retired judge, they are... going to reduce their volume down to every other month twice per week so with this initiative and the reason why we're using maintain we want to maintain that monthly cadence so that there's no drop off again targeting those individuals that are the longest serving in the jail so we're having those discussions right now with superior court as they're the ones who'd be administering this would be a senior court excuse me a superior court senior judge and just assessing any additional investment that may be needed to bring on an additional senior judge and then looking at the rest of the justice system ecosystem, filling out the roles to the DA's office, public defender's office, any court staff. So again, working with Judge McBurney and Superior Court, we're hoping to launch this again in the August timeframe and would expect about 15 to 20 trials per month under this consolidated calendar. Okay, and then moving to our next item, standing up the diversion hub. At the jail, we are a bit in a limbo right now. We know that the sheriff is working through his misdemeanor policy. Understand there'll be a meeting later today with the chiefs of police to seek feedback, get a current status from the sheriff. That is impacting our estimates on how many people we believe would have a missed booking at the jail, and a lot of that would have significant overlap with what is considered a divertable charge. So we're waiting to get that final list from the sheriff to understand bookings that would definitely be, or excuse me, charges that would definitely be booked in versus charges that would be refused by the sheriff. Given that, we're taking a different approach right now, trying to look for a highest, best use of the diversion hub. And another area that we see needing some specific attention are warrants. Again, I mentioned earlier those failure to appear warrants. That is a problem in the hundreds within the jail. We also have probation violation warrants. And so what we would do with this hub is working with a lot of the same stakeholders that are in the main diversion center standing up what's called the warrant resolution clinic where for individuals that are being booked into jail because they're required to be booked because they have a warrant but there's no other charge holding them in jail we would stand up this warrant resolution clinic to help expedite uh adjudication of those warrants so we're working with state court right now and they're drafting two standing orders on this warrant resolution, the first standing order would standardize this warrant adjudication process, and then the other standing order would be the protocols around assigning a judge, whether it's a judicial officer or whoever the presiding judge is that week. So we're looking to get this, hopefully by the end of summer, launching the hub. The good news is even without the physical hub in place, we can start this warrant resolution clinic in advance of that.

Okay, so that's a good report today.

Yes, sir, and I've got one more for you. Okay. The final item, and again, this is new to the list, is reducing the forensic evidence through a use of third-party labs, and so just to give a quick overview, we are seeing a significant delay, and this has been brought to our attention by the DA's office, public defenders, Chief Judge Landville of Superior Court, Given evidence delay leading to significant backlogs, we're then seeing that knock-on effect or domino effect with the timelines for court processing. Continuances are being required to be issued because evidence is not coming back to the courts, to the prosecutors, to the defense to make rulings. And so what this proposal would include is targeting the areas of sexual assault, drug testing, and ballistics testing to set up a not to exceed cap, essentially a fund which would provide funding for both the testing and then with any evidence testing, you're also required to provide expert witness testimony, which carries a significant cost. It could be a couple hundred dollars per hour for the person who performed the test to then come and provide testimony in court. So these funds, these not to exceed caps would help to fund both the testing and funding the expert witness testimony during trial. And so we're working with the DA's office right now and hoping to bring within the next, hopefully the next board meeting, a proposal back to the board on what our recommended level to fund would be for each of these third party labs.

Yeah, I don't think it should take much time, so I'm really looking forward to that at our next meeting. Yes, sir. Commissioner Harrington.

So a couple questions. The warrant resolution clinic definitely sounds interesting, but I'm wondering why it's only state court. It sounds like that's only for misdemeanors.

Yes, sir. We're starting with state court, working with Judge Taylor. This had actually been in the works for a while now. I believe when the diversion hub was originally planned several years ago, this was going to be a component of it. So we've essentially dusted this part off, reengaged with state court and Judge Taylor. And I guess if you want to frame it as a pilot targeting misdemeanants who would have these warrants needing resolution. So the...

As a criminal defense attorney, one of the most popular calls that I get or one of the most repeat calls that I get are people saying, hey, do I have a warrant? And so there's no database or there's no way. Most people want... People want to find out if they have a warrant so that they can try to resolve it, but there's nothing, no process that allows them to do that. So I'm glad to hear about this, but we may want to also think about a process that allows them a warrant database where people can go check and find out if they have one so that they can try to resolve it. So let's keep that in mind as well. And that's not only state court but superior as well. Yes, sir. You know, if I can put in my information to find out my voting location, I ought to be able to put in my information to find out. if I have a warrant, and then try to be able to get it resolved. And then on the texting side as well, I'm not sure who all is involved in that, but I think that is definitely a good program. I would just say that we need to make sure that attorneys are involved in being texted as well. Yes, sir. Because they can help their clients. Especially those that don't have phones. Especially those that may not have phones, right? Yes, sir. So both of those are good, and hopefully we can get to a place where that warrant resolution clinic and the texting will help us. Yes, sir. Good. Commissioner Barrett?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for the information on all of the different aspects of this. I know it's a lot, but on the warrant process, I just had a question about sort of the time it's going to take. In other words, if somebody is arrested because they have a warrant and brought to wherever this is going to be, outside the jail, Does the police officer have to sit there and wait for an hour? What's the, is it two hours? Is it 15 minutes? And the reason I'm asking is because, you know, one of the sort of selling points, if you will, of the diversion center was it's, you know, I forget the number, 80 seconds or something like that, to get someone sort of into that process so the police officers can get back to their policing work. And even with that, there's been... the adoption has been slow. And so I'm just wondering if this is going to be adopted by the police agencies across the county, if it's a long process and what that looks like.

Yeah, thank you, Commissioner Behr. And I should have clarified in my comments, this is gonna have a bit of a different flavor than the diversion center. One of the biggest issues we are seeing, or I shouldn't say biggest, but an issue we are seeing with individuals being brought to the diversion center And to Commissioner Arrington's point, if an officer has every intention to take an individual to the diversion center, but they still run a criminal history report, the officer can pull up a warrant. And then the officer is legally required to then bring that individual to the jail and have them booked in. this warrant resolution clinic would actually be serving inmates currently incarcerated, not those who are in the diversion center. So very, thank you for asking that question, because that's a very important nuance. So it's those that have post booking.

Okay, so then, I'm confused a little bit because you have this under the fifth item on the list with the diversion hub. So it's really two completely separate things.

We're hoping that we can do both, I guess the original plan which was an officer did not bring them to the diversion center and now this is a last chance hub where an assessment could be made and the officer or whatever that process is, there's a decision to divert that person instead of admitting them. We're struggling a bit right now because we don't know which cases, or excuse me, which charges are gonna be booked in. We're trying to expand any other usable scope for this hub, and so this was another another strategy that we could implement within the hub. So one would be pre-arrest diversion following the same mission as the diversion center. This would be expanding the mission to target those that have been booked into jail.

So I'm just trying to get an understanding here. So at that point, whatever the physical space is, that is this hub, would just be office space for that because the person's in the jail already?

Probably be largely administrative, correct.

Okay. Just my suggestion might be these seem like pretty different things. The only commonality that they're going to use the same physical space that maybe they should be separated, but it looks like it's still early stages. So thank you for the info.

Commissioner Harrington?

Okay, I want to go back because you just said that, so the warrant resolution center, which is a great idea, needs to be expanded for those that are not in jail. If we're trying to reduce the number of people going in, what I just heard you say is that it is only for those that have already been booked in. Correct. And so if we're trying to decrease the number of people that are being booked in, we need to be thinking about the warrant resolution center for those that are not already booked in. The ones that are already booked in are already booked in. Their warrant's gonna get resolved anyway. The ones that need the warrants resolved are the ones that are not in jail. And so if we can expand our thought process around that to those that may have warrants and may need to find out if they have a warrant, I think that will serve us better than the ones that are already in jail, and certainly the ones, and not just low-level warrant, right? So just think about that. I guess when I first heard you say it, I was thinking, those that have warrants and there's a way to resolve them. But your response to Commissioner Barrett was that that's for those that are already, who have already been booked and who are already in the jail.

right yes sir this would be a reductive measure not a divertive measure because they're already in the jail so you'd be reducing the population instead of them diverting where we're not adding to the population your point is is well taken we want this to be a living list right as new initiatives are identified we want to add them we want to vet them we want to implement them um the benefit of i don't want to say the benefit I guess the convenience of doing this hub as we're describing it, or this warrant resolution clinic as we're describing it, where we're targeting individuals in jail is that there's a known population, right? And we're targeting individuals who would be out of jail if not for this warrant, and working with state court, trying to find a process to expedite this resolution. So I think we want to push that initiative, but to your point, Is there a greater population out there that would prevent them from going into jail in the first place?

Yeah, I think we need to try to walk and chew gum at the same time. Yes, sir.

All right, Vice Chair Abdurakhman.

With all due respect, Mr. Narake, I think you explained it, but as one who sits on the Justice Policy Board, we are doing both of them, Commissioner Arrington and Commissioner Barrett. The problem is he's speaking from a reduction of what they have identified as a problem and making sure that we do the legwork or there's an area space for the legwork to be done if that is a warrant and it is a good warrant because we know there are warrants and you know this, Commissioner Arrington, that are not good warrants that are still on the books. That is part of the reduction plan. Now what's part of the Justice Policy Board diversion plan is to make sure that part of the warrant clinic makes sure, and we just talked about this in the meeting, if you've got somebody who's divertable and then all of a sudden the police officer sees a warrant come up they gotta be able to have the administratively done part there, right then and there, to walk it back and say, oh no, that should be off the system. And so we have identified that at the Justice Policy Board that we need to make sure that if someone can be diverted and a warrant shows up the officer has a duty to take that person in. However, if we have a mechanism that administratively the warrant clinic can say, wait a minute, that's a stale warrant, that warrant's not good, or whatever the situation is, it can be addressed there without that person even ever going to the jail. So I know they sound like they're interrelated, but they're not. And I don't mean to... Correct you?

No ma'am.

But I know that you're giving the information in the parameters of reduction. which means that person that's in, there's a warrant, hold, or whatever that is not, that may not be good. That administratively, we need to be able to get rid of, and this speaks to what you said, Commissioner Arrington, that if somebody has a warrant out, they should be able to find out if they got the warrant, because it may not be a good warrant. And so I think what has happened in the translation of what he's doing He's talking about from a reduction standpoint and what they have identified as something that could help reduce the numbers. Please tell me if I'm correct in my assessment of what you're talking about.

I believe so, Vice Chair. I think there's two ways to attack this, both for individuals in jail and individuals before they go into jail.

Exactly. And meanwhile, the Justice Policy Board, we have an actual parameter of that with the warrant resolution center that they are trying and they have started implementing this county manager remember we talked about this at the last meeting where if they try to divert somebody and all of a sudden a warrant pops up and so that officer is under the duty to take that person in on that warrant however administratively if we have you know, the situation in place where you can run that down, you can get it resolved and say, hey, I've talked to the judge, I've talked to the solicitor, that is not a good warrant. That warrant should be off. Give us an hour, give us 45 minutes or whatever. So that's a different conversation and that's a different problem and we just don't want them looped in. Would you say that's correct, County Manager, based on our last meeting?

Yes, ma'am.

Okay, all right, thank you.

Anything else? No, sir, unless there's any questions with the rest of the justice presentation, that's all I had. All right. Any other questions? Thank you, sir. Great.

Thank you, board. Madam Clerk.

Bottom of page 8, 260363, finance. Presentation, review, and approval of the June 17th, 2026 budget soundings and resolution.

Madam CFO. Madam CFO.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The item that's before you today is two updates to the annual hardware and software maintenance list. The first one is for serve tracker web hosting. We needed to increase the amount on the AML list by $6,922. That's for senior services. The second item is for a product related to our SD-WAN network, and it is an additional increase to the annual hardware and maintenance software list of $577,544. That's for the Department of Information Technology. Both of those items were funded in the budget, and we just needed to increase the amounts on the AML list. No other items.

We have a motion to approve by Vice Chair Abdulrahman, seconded by Commissioner Thorne.

And the vote is open. And the motion passes, five yeas, zero nays.

Continue.

On page 9, 260365, Real Estate and Asset Management requests approval to increase spending authority in the total amount not to exceed $374,881.75 to cover costs for additional on-site landscape ground maintenance and lawn care services.

All right, a favorable motion by Vice Chair Abdur Rahman, seconded by Commissioner Thorne.

And the vote is open. And the motion passes, five yeas, zero nays. 260366 requests approval to utilize cooperative purchasing in the total amount not to exceed $150,000 to provide copy, paper, and related supplies as needed.

All right, motion to approve by Vice Chair Abdur Rahman, seconded by Commissioner Thorne.

And the vote is open. And the motion passes, five yeas, zero nays. 260367, information technology, request approved to utilize cooperative purchasing to upgrade and replace internal facing firewall networking equipment for a total cost of $1,775,296.86. All right, motion to approve by Vice Chair, Dr. Rachman, seconded by Commissioner Barrett.

And the vote is open.

And the motion passes, five yeas, zero nays. 260368 requests approval of a statewide contract in an amount of $3 million to provide telecommunication services and products countywide.

Motion to approve by Commissioner Thorne, seconded by Vice Chair Abdur Rahman. Please vote.

And the vote is open. And the motion passes, five yeas, zero nays. On page 10, 260369, request approval of a statewide contract in the amount of $500,000 to provide telecommunication services and products.

Motion to approve by Vice Chair Abdurakhman, seconded by Commissioner Thorne.

And the vote is open. And the motion passes, five yays, zero nays. Under Health and Human Services 260370, Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities, request approval to amend an existing contract in an amount not to exceed $400,000 to provide poor child and adolescent outpatient.

All right, motion to approve by Vice Chair, Dr. Rockbond, seconded by Commissioner Thorne. Commissioner Barrett, you have the floor.

I just had a question. It seemed like this was a vendor that had had some issues and was on a plan to improve those, and I was just sort of wondering why we would be renewing if they were struggling, and if there's other providers, are we re-bidding? Because it seemed like this was also an extension beyond the original contract, correct?

Actually, it's not an extension. We only approved it for the first six months when we renewed it.

Okay, got it. But yeah, I'd still like to just understand because I want to make sure that the adolescents are getting the service they need and that it's all getting reported to us so we can tell if they are.

Absolutely. Good morning. Latrina Foster, Director of the Department of Behavioral Health. In reference to the request in front of you, which is to extend the existing contract, that we currently have with Georgia Hope, our child and adolescent provider at Oak Hill, I'm sorry, Health and Human Services at Oak Hill, the campus name changed. Originally, when we requested to renew their contract, which was approved in December of 2025, We took the approach to renew their contract for six months because there were a lot of concerns in reference to their performance with the contract deliverables in 2025. In order to ensure continuity of care for the children and adolescents that we do serve at Oak Hill, we placed Georgia Hope on a corrective action plan. We also hosted a huge behavior health network provider meeting in February which I think assisted with all of our contractors understanding the county's expectations around this network of providers. In reference to Georgia Hope's current corrective action plan, they have implemented multiple strategies to increase their census, which was one of our Big concerns, the number of individuals that they were serving. They have currently to date, January to May 31st, they provided services to 293 individuals. Their contract deliverable is to ensure that they provide services to at least 800. They have committed to assign staff to our community outreach events so that they're able to do more marketing around services at Oak Hill. They have implemented a strategy where they're partnering with the department with DFACS to provide supervised parental visits for children that are in foster care. We have the observation room where the therapist can observe the interaction between the parent and the child. In addition to that, they have implemented non-traditional hours where they actually offer hours until 9 PM to make it convenient for the parents. So I think a combination of some of the strategies that they have implemented, the partnership that we have cultivated amongst all of our network providers, as well as our behavioral health team kind of working one-on-one with Georgia Hope has assisted with them increasing their contract deliverable. I'm sorry, increasing the expectations with them meeting the expectations of their contract deliverable. So at this point, we are requesting to extend their contract to December 31st and we will reassess where we are by September of 2026.

Just one follow-up. You said that the number that they're supposed to be seeing is 800. Is that for the year? Yes. Okay. Well, thank you for that, and good to know that we'll be evaluating again in the fall. Thank you.

All right. A favorable motion by Vice Chair, Dr. Rockbond, seconded by Commissioner Thorne.

The vote is open. And the motion passes, five yeas, zero nays. Commissioners, action items 260329, request approval resolution to approve a grant from funds previously set aside to aid in the restoration and preservation of the George Towns and Grace Towns Hamilton Homes, two historic properties associated with civil rights history of Atlanta and for other purposes. Sponsored by Commissioner Barrett.

All right, we have a motion to approve by Vice Chair Abdulrahman, seconded by Commissioner Thorne. Commissioner Barrett.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Colleagues, this is similar to some of the other items that I have put on the agenda to get approval to release funding from the West Side Tad tax increment. That is set aside. So this is not general fund money at all, just releasing funds that already have been delivered to Invest Atlanta. And this is to restore two civil rights homes that are in disrepair. the George Alexander Towns home. He was, for people who don't know, co-founder of the 1905 Niagara Movement, which was the sort of starting place for the NAACP, I think. Do I have that right? My notes are a little all over the place. And then his daughter, Grace Towns Hamilton, that house is right next door and also in disrepair. And she was the first African-American woman elected to the Georgia General Assembly in 1966. So we The idea here is to repair these homes and have them be you know, available to the public as historic landmarks, but also help with the neighborhood, which is that particular part of that street is, you know, in disrepair, which is not great for public safety and all of that. And I do want to add, we heard about this in public comment at the last meeting. Dr. Karshik Sims-Alvarado was here to talk about it because this was an initiative put forward by her organization, Preserve Black Atlanta. and they are a champion in getting this project done. So I would certainly approve, sorry, appreciate your favorable vote.

Vice Chair Abdur-Rahman.

Thank you, Chairman. Clerk, on 26-0329 through 26-0371, I'm going to co-sponsor that, all of those items with my colleague. So noted. Thank you, Madam Vice Chair. No problem.

Okay, for those of you who do not know who Grace Towns Hamilton Holmes was, I would recommend that you do some research. She was a, I knew her, beautiful, brilliant, charming, graceful, extremely politically astute, very quiet spoken, very quiet spoken, but got things done.

I would like to co-sponsor those items as well.

So noted.

All right, the motion, you wanna take them all together?

Take them all together.

I'm happy to take them all together, but I do just want to point out just briefly what they are, and then we can vote. Okay, all right. So the next one's 0330, and I know you're going to have to sound them all, Madam Clerk, but I'll just summarize myself here quickly, is to convert 66 existing market rate units in a multifamily development into affordable housing, which is sort of a unique thing we don't hear about often, but a really good use of APARTMENTS THAT CAN'T BE RENTED THAT ARE AVAILABLE IN A GREAT BUILDING, SO VERY EXCITED ABOUT THAT ONE. THESE ARE ALL DISTRICT SIX, AS YOU KNOW, AND THANK YOU FOR CO-SPONSORING. AND THEN THE NEXT ONE, 0331, IS AN AFFORDABLE HOUSING EFFORT IN THE ENGLISH AVENUE NEIGHBORHOOD, AND THIS IS FOR 20-UNIT AFFORDABLE MULTI-FAMILY DEVELOPMENT. AND THEN LAST BUT NOT LEAST, THE ANDREW YOUNG The International Institute for Peace and Reconciliation, the planning is underway for that. There was some unexpected extra work that had to be done to get the site prepared, and so the last item here, 0371, help with that site preparation and be a small contribution from Fulton County's Westside Tax Increment to participate in this very important center for education that will be an international, will be wonderful for students, and also will celebrate and preserve the legacy of Ambassador Young.

I would just sound the floor of the Madam Clerk.

Okay, 260330, request approval resolution to support affordable housing in downtown Atlanta to convert 66 existing market rate units in a multifamily development in affordable housing. 260331, request approval resolution to support affordable housing in the English Avenue neighborhood to aid in the construction of a 20 unit affordable multifamily development. 260371, request approval resolution to approve a grant for site preparation work necessary for the construction of the Andrew Young International Institute for Peace and Reconciliation in the Vine City neighborhood.

All right, you have a favorable motion on all four by Vice Chair Abdur-Rahman and seconded by Commissioner Thorne.

And the vote is open. And the motion passes, five yeas, zero nays. On page 11, County Manager's Presentation and Discussion Items, 260372, Advanced Metering Infrastructure Implementation Update.

Good morning. Okay, there we are. Again, David Clark, Public Works Director for Fulton County. At the last meeting, you asked for an update on where we are with our AMI program, and hopefully we'll be able to answer some questions here today. Next slide, please. Just as a reminder, we have about 80,000 water meters in our system. Our system is primarily north of the Chattahoochee River. We do not have any service south of the river. And there's a small area of the city of Roswell, which is still provided by the city of Roswell Water Department. And then Mountain Park actually gets their water from Cobb County. Next slide, please. So a little bit of things that happened over the last year or so, and we'll go into a little more detail on many of these during the presentation. We certainly recognize there's been a number of billing concerns, mostly in 2025. All of those concerns were very valid. But they all were contractor meter reading based and not technology based. So that's important to know. And the main reason is the contractors we've hired in the past failed to read the meters every 60 days as required. And so therefore, the bills that people got were estimated bills and not necessarily real reads. And then what happened when the real read happened, it always seemed to be out of sync with whether estimate thought it was going to be. And so there was quite a bit of billing issues associated with that. Our meter reading contractor, Texas Meter Reading, has improved their performance this year and we've had a lot less estimates needed to be done. However, we still think it's important to move forward with an AMI process because meter reading manually is unfortunately a dead profession and it's one that we just need to get away from as quickly as we possibly can. We have looked at a couple of different possible ways of getting away from that and going into the AMI program. One was an immediate conversion, the second was a metering as a service, and we're at now, as a pay-or-you-go, a phased implementation type of process. And the phased implementation seems to be the best option because it allows us to maximize our current infrastructure in phases that will match what we have in financial budget-wise. Next slide, please. So this map kind of shows a little bit of the challenge. Altogether, we have 80,000 meters. 37,000 are AMI-capable. Since 2016, we've been buying AMI-capable meters. Have not been turning that function on because we didn't have any way to read those meters, but it's almost impossible to buy a non-AMI meter today in the market. So we have a number of AMI meter capable meters out there. Those are all shown on the right-hand side in blue. Everything that's on the left-hand slide in gray are manual read meters. And unfortunately, what you see when you look at the two things, the two graphics, Everything is spread out on top of each other. This is a hodgepodge of meters, so it makes it challenging for us to be able to come up with a phased approach that will read a lot of meters in such a way that we maximize the number of capable meters that we have. Next slide, please. So we certainly are fully committed in moving to an AMI platform, and I think we have identified a way to do that. Next slide, please. So last year, we did try to acquire AMI technology through two different RFPs. The first one was an immediate conversion. Get somebody on board who can do all 80,000 meters at one time and convert them to an AMA platform. Unfortunately, there was no successful meter vendor that was identified as part of that approach. So we moved to metering as a service, where we would basically lease the meters from a supplier. They would put them all in, and then we would have a yearly payment that we'd have to pay for that. Unfortunately, That process looked good up until we looked at the termination fee. The proposals that we got had very, very high termination fees, about $70 million at the end of the program. We just felt that was not a good investment. So what we learned is the financial reality is moving all 80,000 meters to a single AMI platform at one time is just not attainable. So that's why we started looking at how can we do this in phases. Next slide. So what do we need out there to read the existing AMI-capable meters? First and foremost, we need a collector. A collector is put on a very tall location, typically a water tower, communication tower that the county owns, that will be able to read a large area. It does vary by topography. The hillier the area, the more number of collectors that you need, the flatter the area, the less number of collectors, because you can read them a lot further away. Based on our initial look, the Alpharetta and Jones Bridge water tank locations seem to be the best locations to read as many as we can, with only investing in two collectors. If we put two collectors up, we'll be able to read 6,000 of those 37,000 AMI meters. We also need to modify our software license with the vendor. And then the nice thing about it is once we start reading these remotely, we can then remove them from Texas Meter's meter reading responsibilities and we'll actually save money because we have to pay, and we'll show that in a moment, we have to pay Texas Meter $2.00 and some cents every single time they read a meter. We'll be able to get rid of that financial responsibility. And it's also important to note that we'll continue buying new meters that are AMI capable, and whenever we can, we'll be able to turn those on to AMI without having to go out and actually buy another AMI meter. Next slide, please. So if you look at where the two tank locations are, and we've put together a couple of graphics to hopefully show that. So if we put one at the Alpharetta tank location, we'll be able to read about 2,400 meters, and everything inside that red circle is approximately what we'll be able to read. And you can see there's a good number of blue dots in there. The next slide shows that same reading area with just the street network. to help you give a little bit better idea of where that is in Alpharetta. And then the next slide shows a similar graphic for the Jones Bridge area with the number of blue dots. We'll be able to read about 3,600 meters. And then the next slide shows that same area on the street view. So with the next slide, As I said, so there is a little bit of a cost to implement this first phase. It costs about $10,000 to install those two collectors. It's about $35,000 to modify our license to read those 6,000 meters. So it's total investment that we have to put in about $45,000. However, because we'll be able to stop having Texas Meter read our And each time they read it, it's $2.30. We're paying them approximately $83,000 a year to read those 6,000 meters. So therefore, we'll have about a $38,000 savings in order to move to this first phase of the AMI process. But not only do we get some financial benefit, we'll be able to read the meters in real time. And so when the customers call in to customer service and water billing office with questions about their meters, they'll be able to pull up not only what the current reading is, but their history, their hourly usage, so hopefully, because a lot of times people don't realize when they're using water or how much of their water they're being used, and we've found that if we can tell them, hey, between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m. you used a lot of water, was there something going on at your house? Oh yeah, I remember, that's when I was watering the garden or something like that. So that ability to read meters in real time with real information will certainly help with a lot of the calls that we get. Next slide, please. So just a little bit of a financial comparison, kind of summary of what we've talked about. The immediate conversion we certainly liked, but there was a high initial capital cost. It did allow us to quickly implement it, but we don't have the cash, so therefore we would have to look at doing some type of bond. So in the end it was too costly. The metering as a service has a low annual cost, but it had the high termination fees. What was nice about it was turnkey. It was a system that the vendor owned, and we just kind of received the reads from it. But there was a long-term financial burden that it came up with and actually wound up being just too inflexible as well as costly at the end of the day, which really leads us to the phased approach. It is moderate. I mean, there is some real costs associated with it. As we can pay as we go, it's less of an impact to our capital budget. It allows us to maximize our existing assets, and it seems it makes the most economical sense, and it's a scalable approach, and allow us to move to other phases. The con, obviously, because it is a phased approach, it will take a little bit longer for us to convert all 80,000 meters to an ANI platform. And the last slide. Just some conclusions. So again, we really do believe that activating these 6,000 meters through the installation of the two collectors as well as the software update will allows us to have some immediate operational and financial benefits. It continues allows us to maximize our prior investments, reduces our manual reading costs, and it should improve the billing accuracy. Because it is scalable, next year in 2027, we are doing a rate study. So based on how well this pilot goes, we could look at accelerating it as part of the rate study. Or as part of the next upcoming bond sale, which we believe will happen in 28 or 29 associated with the Camp Creek facility. We could add some money to that bond sale to allow for or the AMI conversion to occur under that program. Some back of the envelope numbers that we've looked at, we believe it's about a $1 to $3 million additional investment to convert the next 31,000 meters after we do this initial 6,000. conversion and then the big challenge is gonna be how do we pay for and implement the conversion on those existing 42,000 manual conversions. That is gonna be about a 36 to $42 million investments. That's why we are looking at the rate study and the bond sale as ways to accommodate and accomplish that part of the program. So with that, I'll be certainly happy to answer any questions.

All right, Commissioner Arrington, Commissioner Thorne, Commissioner Ellis. Thank you, Mr. Clark, for this update.

I feel a lot more comfortable after receiving this update than I did at the last meeting. I am, I guess, a little bit concerned because you're saying that the meter reading will save 83,000 a year, but the second page of the slide said that they were, they were not doing the meter reading, or at least they were not doing it every 60 days as they were required to. Correct.

So you're right, that savings would occur if they meet the contract requirement of reading it every 60 days or six times a year. They've been meeting that recently. 2025 and 24, we were not meeting that, but recently we have been meeting that. Okay, okay.

All right, well, thank you. I'm ready to support, I think this makes sense, and best thing to do at this time, thank you.

Commissioner Thorne.

Thank you, this is very helpful, especially seeing the map and the areas that you are covering, and you do have one on Jones Bridge on that water tower. I'm glad to see that. What is the average cost of just one meter?

A AMI-capable meter is about $350 to $400 each. And then it's usually another $400 to $500 apiece to install it. So somewhere between $850 and $1,000 per meter installed and operational.

And the benefit is that you have more accurate readings. You no longer have estimated readings or incorrect readings that we encounter. Does it have the capability to alert if there's a potential leak on a property, like an abnormal usage? Will it be customer facing, where a customer could log into their account, watch their water usage, monitor their water usage, and set up text alerts if there's an abnormal water usage, a leak or forgot to, you left a hose and you went on running and you went on vacation, that type of thing.

There is that capability. One of the things that we're considering is do we want to really implement that Is a phased approach or wait until everybody can benefit from it? I mean, it's one of those things that, yes, there's a way for these 6,000 customers as part of this first phase to access that data if we wanted them to. But do we really want to, or what other challenges that we may be creating by allowing some people to access that information and others can't? So that's something we're still looking at.

Perhaps if we did phase it in, it'd be, you could tell people, well, you can upgrade your meter, we're gradually phasing it in, but if you would like this in quicker, that they could buy in and pay an extra $400, and then we cover the installation cost or somewhere. Because I know I've had a plethora of calls, they've weaned off a little bit with incorrect meter readings, My understanding is that my bill was high We have the old manual read meters in my neighborhood. And if you have multiple meters, if you have one for your landscape outdoor watering meter, then you could have a potential leak. We lose a lot of money having to reimburse people for potential leaks. I just would maybe want to look at the cost benefit. Maybe people, there's some people who are like, hey, I'd love to have this service. How can I get it? and they might be incentivized to buy in it right away.

And we can certainly look at that.

Commissioner Ellis.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Clark, just a couple questions on... We've got, what, multiple, what, about 10 storage tanks or 10 towers?

Nine towers altogether, sir.

nine towers altogether. So is there any, and so the cost to put in these collectors is not that expensive, right? Correct. Is there any, are those other locations, do they not work at all or do they just have a much more limited range?

They have a more limited range, but the main reason why, and that's where the next phases would occur. We wanted to have the biggest bang for the buck, so to speak, so that's why we chose these two to get our feet wet, to understand the conversion process, with these two, and then assuming that they're successful, we would start implementing the next phases on those remaining seven locations. And then from there, we'll have to figure out what areas of the county can't be read from an existing water tower, and then start looking at some other options, a communication tower, or maybe co-locate at a city-owned facility.

Okay, I just was wondering why, given the cost involved, Why not just go ahead and do them all at once?

Again, we really wanted to do a manageable first phase pilot so we can learn what we don't know right now. We don't want to overcommit in finding out that we missed something along the way.

All right, so the timing in the playthrough on this reminds... I guess you said it in here, but can you just sort of go through that again?

So the idea is the first phase would be implemented this summer, early fall at the latest, and then we would start looking at implementing the next phases next year, spring of 2027.

But, I mean, if we got some sort of early indication that this was effectively working, is... Is there any reason we couldn't accelerate that?

No, and we would want to accelerate. I just don't want to overcommit right now, unfortunately.

Okay. Do you have any sort of estimate of the AMI meters we have out there if we had them on all our tanks? like what kind of coverage that would give us?

We have asked the supplier to do that analysis, and they have told us that it's about 20,000 to 21,000 meters that could be read if we had collectors in all of our tanks.

Okay. All right. Thank you.

All right. Other questions? Nothing else? Thank you, Mr. Clark. Any high rollers come yet?

Not yet, but I'll let you know.

Thank you, sir. All right. All right, 12-19, lunchtime. I'll entertain a motion to recess. I'm sorry, Commissioner. Oh, I'm sorry. What appointment?

The add-on item.

Yes.

Okay, it's 260375, Fulton County Board of Tax Assessors. Commissioner Barrett has nominated Melinda Kaplan to a full board reappointment to a term ending June 30th, 2030.

All right, motion to approve by Commissioner Thorne, seconded by Commissioner Arrington. Please vote.

And the vote is open.

That's a four-year appointment, right? Yeah.

And the motion passes, five yays, zero nays.

Commissioner Eric, did you have a question? Somebody had a question. All right, then we're seeing a motion for lunch and executive session where we may take up items regarding real estate litigation or personnel. Please vote.

And the vote is open. And the motion passes, five yays, zero nays.

So now that we got all the crazy, ugly,

All right, guys, come on now. You ready, Madam County Attorney? Yes. All right, without objection, we will resume the regular order of business. We're taking up items from executive session. Madam County Attorney.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Is there a motion to approve- a contract not to exceed $52,000 from July 1st, 2026 through December 31st, 2026, annualized at $104,000 for a licensed psychologist and a similarly credentialed team to provide wellness and mental health support to the Fulton County Sheriff's Office, including assistance with policy development, mental health wellness visits and consultations, crisis assistance and training for command staff, With one renewal.

All right, motion to approve by Commissioner Barrett, seconded by Commissioner Thorne.

And the vote is open. And the motion passes, four yeas, zero nays.

Is there a motion to approve the requests for representation in items four, five, and six of the executive session agenda?

All right, motion to approve by Commissioner Arrington, seconded by Commissioner Barrett.

And the vote is open. And the motion passes, four yays, zero nays. No further action items.

All right, any other matters that come before us?

No further items.

All right, if not, we are adjourned. Thank you for your attendance and participation.